A brain dump about living and working on the edge of the social web.

50 posts categorized "Me"

September 30, 2009

In December of 2003, The Flaming Lips were asked to perform at the Yahoo! Year End Party in San Francisco. I worked for Yahoo at the time and had a minor role in getting them to play. Because of this I was able to be on stage during the performance in an owl costume that smelled like urine. It was during this time that I experienced one of the happiest moments of my life...

July 22, 2009

It can be argued that blogging died the day Twitter launched. Ironic because those dudes made Blogger as well. I love them for that. They are product geniuses. Blogging as a platform is still valid, but personal blogs or small-timey one's like mine make less sense. Status updates and link sharing through twitter or facebook work well enough and are much easier to manage when all you really want to do is get a thought out. There's no need for paragraphs. For better or worse, it's the way things are.

I recently went through this blog and did something I never thought I would. I deleted about half of the posts I've ever written. Over 400 posts have been removed. I did this because I wanted focus to the site. I almost deleted them all, but going through the posts I realized that there were things worth keeping. The cancer stuff, my rants about yahoo, and digital life management. These are the things I will write about. My work and a little about my life and some of the areas in between. I think writing about my experience with lung cancer helps me cope with it and may help others in the process. Writing about my work is the reason why I started this blog and I don't intend to stop.

So I'll leave it at that for now. If I'm going to keep this blog, I want to make it worth it for me and you.

Feel free to browse around and go back in time to read some older stuff. When I did it, I was sort of amazed at how much passion I had. I was very excitable indeed. I think I've lost that edge a little since the cancer shit happened... maybe it will come back. Maybe it won't. My priorities aren't the same, I know that. It's not necessarily apathy, it just might be focus.

May 15, 2008

What were your childhood dreams? What did you want to be when you grew up?

I think these questions or their answers stay with you all your life in some form or fashion. I've been thinking about mine recently. What were my childhood dreams?

My first memory of what I wanted to be was an Italian. I think because I liked spaghetti. Then for some reason I wanted to be a dentist. This is still a mystery. Maybe because I went to one. Those were preschool thoughts.

When I started to seriously think about it, as seriously as a child does, there was a space theme. Pretty common for someone born in the sixties ('69). I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to go to the moon or walk in space or anything as long as it was out of our atmosphere. Then I wanted to be an aerospace engineer. One of those guys that sat in mission control smoking Kool Cigarettes or pipes pushing buttons and speaking into headsets. I thought that might be a back way to get to space. Then I had dreams of becoming an astronomer. If I couldn't go to space, then perhaps I could stare at it every night. I'm realizing now that I had a tendency to get more and more practical for some reason.

Star Wars, Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T. changed my life. I wanted to make movies. I wanted to be an actor. I wanted to work for Industrial Light and Magic. I needed to be a part of that. I needed to make my own magic. Those films were so wonderful. ILM was an obsession. I drew sketches of ships. I made models and masks, I studied storyboards. I loved "making of" documentaries and books. Motion control photography, go-motion animation, steadycams, blue screens, sound effects. I told myself that I wanted to act and I'd become an actor by working behind the scenes, but really I wanted to be on a crew. I wanted to pull the lens or troubleshoot an action sequence.

I finally decided that I should be a cinematographer. I'd go to film school and study Nestor Almendros or Gordon Willis or Haskell Wexler or Michael Ballhaus or even Barry Sonnefeld. But the Internet got in the way and here I am.

Here is a list of some of my childhood dreams:
1. Go into space
2. be a baseball player/hit a homerun/do something with baseball
3. Work for ILM or George Lucas/Make a special effects movie
4. Be in a band
5. Live in Europe
6. Invent something
7. Be an artist
8. Be an actor
9. Join a motorcycle gang
10. Be an astronomer

I had others. Some were more fleeting. But many are still with me. Sometimes I wonder why I can't or am not doing any of them. Are we told to forget our childhood dreams? Are we told to grow up? Is that what's expected?

I live across the street from a country firehouse. It's a training station as well. Right now I'm looking over and seeing the new recruits gathered and learning about whatever it is they learn. I wonder how many of them wanted to be a "fireman". I wonder how many of them are fulfilling their childhood dreams. I hope all of them. That would be cool.

April 06, 2008

I think I'm going to go into radio silence for a bit. Nothing against you. You are awesome. It's me. I'm getting tired of the scene. Twitter is totally getting me down. It's losing its luster. I'm nearly at 1,000 tweets and that might be enough for a while. I don't know who I'm doing it for... i'm not getting much out of it that's for sure. It all seems so self indulgent. LOOK AT ME! (Please don't think that I think that people shouldn't use twitter, twitter is awesome, it's just the way i feel at the moment.)

I like my friends on Twitter... I try to keep it to people I know and care about. I like to see what they are doing. But those people don't use it that much.

Blogging is the same. I have lots to say about stuff. I've been working in the Internet industry since 1993, so I know what I'm doing, but I don't always feel like taking the time to write about it. I'd rather watch my boy play baseball or hike with my daughter. I can blog about that, but then I'd have to be clever. That gets tiring.

I hope you forgive my silence. I may pop up every now and then. I may still tweet every so often. But I'm cooling off on all of this noise so I can focus on some important stuff.

January 03, 2008

On the subject of money... Oil is trading at $100 a barrel, Apple is trading at $200 a share, Google is at $685... does it ever seem like somethings not quite right? I'm happy for Apple and Goog (i know that google doesn't split) and there's no denying their success, but something seems out of whack compared with the rest of the world. It feels like something bad is brewing.

January 01, 2008

1. Get a chainsaw
2. Take down mister productdone.
3. Fix the garage roof
4. Go to Vipassana Santa Cruz
5. Cut down or cut out caffeine, sugar, pastries, meat, and other bad things (fatblog?)
6. Walk or ride my bike two or three times a week
7. Write my book.
8. Do the Santa Cruz stuff
9. One thing, one thing, one thing
10. Keep working hard
12. Play with my kids
13. Do the right financial things
14. Do the other right things
15. Watch Do The Right Thing

December 29, 2007

As you know, I often use this blog as a brain dump. Stuff that's on my mind or things that I want to work out, you know. I just start a post and write. I don't always know where it's going.

One of the things I'm thinking about is taking down Mister Product. It's fun, but also a distraction. I can do product posts here when I feel like it. I've done that before, so why not? I also want to see Swedelife grow. If I'm going to keep it, it needs to take off. So far the traffic is steady, but not really going anywhere. So I think that in order to have it blossom, I'd have to start posting songs from other artists. Bands that aren't part of the "collective". I don't do these things to entertain myself. It costs too much for that to be the case, so the blogs need to at least pay for themselves.

Another thing I want to do is concentrate more on the one thing thing. Either for me or for my work. Part of the process is standing firm and saying no as much as possible. Being a strong filter for bullshit is key.

Simplifying ones life is way more difficult than it seems. We are trained to fill every moment of day with something, anything, everything. The radio needs to be on, a computer in the lap, the tv on, the phones, books, noise. Our minds race with input. Removing one thing means that the void left over needs to be filled. We are consumers. We consume. For some unreasonable reason we must constantly feed ourselves with stuff. I think I'm more guilty than anyone. But you probably feel the same about yourself. That's usually how it goes.

When I was consulting for Sears during the last millennium, I asked to watch their sales training videos to get a better idea how to translate their philosophy to an online experience. There was lots of great information presented, but one thing stuck out. They said that the most important thing you can do in life is take care of yourself. If you don't take care of yourself, how can you take care of others, let alone your career? I'll never forget that. This means that you must minimize distractions and then the time you have to do things for yourself first. Health first, well being, mindfulness, finances, then family, then career. You know all this. We all do. But do you do it? Do I? I've been floating in and out of this mindset for what seems like forever. For so long now that there's no way I could allow myself to say that I'll ever do it. At least not to an extent that will seem right. If I do it, I will do it privately.

April 17, 2007

So I've been slowly losing my hearing the past few years. I don't talk about it much, but it's just something I have to deal with. Genetics + lots of Sonic Youth, Einstürzende Neubauten, and the like. I've noticed it getting a little worse lately. It's very subtle. I have to have people repeat themselves more often.

I always felt that technology would catch up with the problem, and it probably will. New hearing aids will be some kind of permanent implanted chip or something... that's cool. I just have one request to the person inventing it. Put in a mute button.

March 28, 2007

I'm feeling more disconnected than ever. The more connected I am, the more fragmented I become. Bits and pieces of me are strewn about. I can't keep track. But it's not about me and my stuff. It's more about everything that I try to track. There's so much that I feel obligated to absorb that it's difficult to concentrate. Too much information dulls the senses.

I miss shared experiences. We're all grasping for bits and pieces of attention. Either for ourselves or for the work we do. If you work online, your job is to attain a slice of mind share from everyone that passes by. We're all competing for the same attention and there's only so much to go around.

This is why I miss shared experiences. Major and mass cultural events that bring us all together. A march on Washington, a moon landing, the bicentennial, Star Wars, King Tut... I don't know... Pop Rocks. A revolution. The "I remember where I was" moments. Even a war... oh yeah. The more distractions the less we can focus. The less we focus the more that escapes us.

The paradox of choice. I don't like it. But I feel helpless to do anything about it. I want to change the world, but I'm afraid no one will pay attention.

Obligatory Introduction

I'm David Beach and this is my blog. I'm a Product Manager, Information Architect, and founder of 12seconds.tv. I work for eBay Mobile. I'm also surviving lung cancer. This site is about my life online and some other junk... enjoy ;)